A REGION INFLAMED: THE TRANSITION

A REGION INFLAMED: THE TRANSITION; Iraq Picks American as Ambassador to U.S.

By SUSAN SACHS

Published: November 23, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 22—
An Iraqi-American activist whose foundation has spent much of the last decade devising visions of democratic rule for Iraq and lobbying for a war crimes trial of Saddam Hussein, will become the country's diplomatic representative in Washington, Iraqi political leaders said Saturday.

Her appointment will be announced in the next few days by the interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, they said.

The activist, Rend Rahim Francke, 54, has directed the Iraq Foundation, which she helped create in 1991, and is a familiar face in Washington from her years lobbying policy makers to provide more muscular support for opponents of Mr. Hussein.

Her new job, she said in an interview here, as a representative of the Iraqi Governing Council, will be a kind of informal ambassadorship.

She said she would represent the emerging Iraqi authority and speak ''for the nascent Iraqi government.''

''It is awkward,'' she added, ''because technically Iraq is still a country under occupation.''

Her appointment reflects the accelerating political developments in Iraq in the past week after the Bush administration said it would turn over control of the nation to a provisional government by June.

''Iraqi officials told us that they intend to get in motion the establishment of sovereign institutions,'' said Dan Senor, an aide to L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator of Iraq and head of the occupation authority. ''Diplomatic relations and re-opening the Iraqi Embassy in Washington were on the Iraqi Foreign Ministry agenda.''

The Iraqi Governing Council appointed by Mr. Bremer -- whose number was reduced to 24 by the assassination of another prominent Iraqi woman, Akila al-Hashimi -- has not had a single personality to represent it, either at home or abroad, because its presidency rotates every month among an inner circle of nine people.

''They wanted to personify this increasing sovereignty, independence and legitimacy, and to make it palpable by the presence of an individual,'' Ms. Francke said.

While she was born in Baghdad and spent some of her childhood there, Ms. Francke has not lived in Iraq full time since the 1970's. But, she said, she believes that Iraqis who lived under Mr. Hussein's dictatorial rule for those years can create a democratic state.

''It's true we have a generation of people who knew nothing but this terror and this silence,'' she said. ''But I think the human spirit is something that can be resuscitated. It's always there.''

The Iraq Foundation represented Ms. Francke's first plunge into political activism after a life in business and finance.

She was inspired, she said, by the immense anger she felt after the Persian Gulf war of 1991, when the American-led coalition decided against pursuing and trying to topple Mr. Hussein. ''I can't tell you my anger -- anger at the U.S., anger at the Arab world -- and frustration,'' she said. ''To have Iraq destroyed and the regime preserved was the ultimate tragedy.''

Her new role as the voice of an occupied country in the halls of power of the occupier is an odd one, she acknowledges. ''It's important to stress that Iraq is a state and has been since 1921,'' she said. ''It's an Iraqi state that temporarily has an abridged sovereignty.''

She became a United States citizen in 1987 but held on to her Iraqi passport, which has long since expired. Is she still an Iraqi citizen? She said that in her mind the answer was yes but that she also expected that the Governing Council would adopt resolutions affirming citizenship for the many cases like hers.

Ms. Francke, whose father is a Shiite Muslim and whose mother is a Sunni, went to boarding school in England, studied at Cambridge and at the Sorbonne. She worked as a banker and a currency trader in Lebanon and Bahrain, as well as London, and said she knew she could not survive in her homeland.

The rest of her family followed her, moving to England in 1978. The Iran-Iraq war removed any remaining hesitation about leaving, because the family included young men of military age who faced being drafted into the army or losing their passports.

She and her family emigrated to the United States in 1981.

Each time she had to visit an Iraq Embassy to renew her passport or do other business, she said she felt again the old government's brutality. Once, in Beirut, an embassy official called her a traitor and the ''scum of society,'' she said.

She said she considered moving back to Iraq during a visit with her family in the mid-1970's but realized it would be fatal. ''I told my dad that if I stayed,'' she said, ''I'll be in jail and you will be too, because I am very intolerant of authority and I'm very outspoken.''

Photo: Rend Rahim Francke, 54, who will be the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, was born in Baghdad but is a naturalized American. (Photo by Ashley Gilbertson/Aurora, for The New York Times)